Photo by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Marie Beckner inspects freshly washed apples as they travel on a conveyer into the grater at Murray Cider Co. in Botetourt County.

Virginia's apple farmers are tasting the start of a rotten year.

Farmers will see a smaller crop than usual, and prices must stay low to compete with cheap, abundant, out-of-state apples.

Virginia, the sixth-largest U.S. grower, will produce 30 million pounds fewer apples than last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts. But a national bumper crop -- the largest in four years, at 10.1 billion pounds -- will save other states' growers. Michigan's harvest alone has doubled since last year.

Wholesale Virginia apples have tumbled about 16 cents per pound, to 34 cents, since last year.

Similarly, national apple prices fell about 30 percent in one year, said Spencer Neale, Virginia Farm Bureau Federation commodities specialist.

"My friends out on the West Coast in Washington had a really big crop, so they can ship out over here and flood the market," said Preston Bryant, field manager at Bryant Orchards in Botetourt County.

Bryant's "friends," in fact, pick almost half of the apples in the United States. Washington will harvest 5.8 billion pounds this fall, the same as last year but still higher than usual.

"Last year was an exceptional year for us," Bryant said. "You can't expect every year to be that good."

Bryant's Botetourt-grown apples sell for $8 a bushel wholesale, compared with $10 to $12 per bushel last year, and the orchard harvested about 20 percent fewer apples, he said.

Ikenberry Orchards in Daleville hasn't lowered its price per bushel, but this year might not be profitable, market manager Gwen Ikenberry said.

The orchard will earn 10 percent to 15 percent less by the year's end, she said.

The orchard's harvest is almost 30 percent smaller than usual this year, with 18,000 bushels compared with 25,000 last season, Ikenberry said.

And the cost of growing and harvesting the fruit has climbed. Prices of chemicals have nearly doubled, and labor is more expensive, too, Ikenberry said.

"We're unable to pass that along, because people will pay only a certain amount," she said. "There's not a lot of money in farming, so it's not unusual."

Ikenberry's roadside stand on U.S. 220, where the orchard sells most of its apples, insulates it somewhat from sinking wholesale market prices. Though apples aren't as much of a bellwether crop as corn or soybeans, the market hinges on basic rules of supply and demand.

The USDA predicts the size of the national crop each September, the beginning of the harvest season, and wholesalers take this cue to set prices, Neale said.

If end-of-harvest tallies come in higher or lower than expected, the prices dive or rise accordingly.

Last year, the harvest totaled 7 percent more than forecast, and prices fell.

"Apples started to appear, it depressed the price, and they didn't really recover," Neale said.

Most Virginia apples end up at processing plants for cutting, canning, peeling and juicing.

Or, as in the case of Murray Cider Co., pasteurizing.

"We're finding enough to run," said Robert Murray, president of the Botetourt County operation. "We're having to call a week in advance to try to line them up and process them as we go."

This year, other apple processors in Virginia scooped up the crop from Murray's usual suppliers, so he's had to shop out of state, he said.

Typically, Murray's apples are almost all Virginia-grown. Only a quarter of this year's lot comes from Virginia, the rest shipped from growers in North Carolina and Maryland, he said.

Murray is paying 6 cents a pound for apples this year, he said. Last year, he paid about 9 cents.

"No two years are alike, not in this business," said Murray, who's been pressing apples into cider for 32 years. The current apple prices will help boost the company's profits "for sure," he added.